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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!hp9000.csc.cuhk.hk!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!mips!mips!kpc!amdcad!BitBlocks.com!bvs From: bvs@BitBlocks.COM (Bakul Shah) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: System hang, working hardware guide Message-ID: <1992Aug8.215403.2590@BitBlocks.COM> Date: 8 Aug 92 21:54:03 GMT References: <michaelv.713151876@test.cc.iastate.edu> <1992Aug7.160048.15061@gateway.novell.com> Organization: Bit Blocks, Inc. Lines: 44 terry@thisbe.npd.Novell.COM (Terry Lambert) writes: >Anyone without the problem: >o What is your controller type? >o What is the board revision? >o What is the ROM revision (if any)? >o What are the jumper settings? >o What other problems do you have? >This information will also be used to provide a "How to set up the hardware so >386BSD will boot and run without problems the first time" guide. My machine used to hang after heavy disk activity as well as when I copied /sys/compile/<MACHINE>/386bsd to / right after a kernel rebuild. This happened on three different configurations: root & /usr on IDE, root & /usr on SCSI, root on IDE & /usr on SCSI. This problem went away after Bill's one liner fix. I still don't understand *why* that fix works but it does. Since then the kernel has crashed only once (when I was trying to make Type1 fonts work under X) but it did not hang even once. And I have rebuilt X386-1.2E-1.0.1 a couple times from scratch *while* compiling a bunch of other things, running X etc. My machine: a noname clone with 25Mhz 486, 128K cache, 16MB ram, OPTi chipset, AMI bios, ET4000 SVGA card, 1024x768i 14" display, wd(?) IDE controller & Adaptec 1542B. Cache is enabled and Bus clock is set at 8.33 Mhz. ATCLK is stretch is disabled and RAM access is 0 wait state. GA20 line is off after power on. All 16MBytes are cacheable. Both Main and Video BIOS are shadowed. I think that these are the default settings for this machine. I did have problems unpacking things during the installation of bin.dist -- the same hang problem. Finally I mounted the 386bsd filesystem on a Sun and copied the distribution by running cpio on the Sun. The PC did die a couple of times but thanks to NFS statelessness & synchronous writes, the Sun cpio continued copying once the machine came up again. I did checksum evertyhing just to make sure. Until Bill's fix I unpacked everything using this scheme. So I'd say it is definitely worth building a new dist.fs with just this one fix. Bakul Shah <bvs@bitblocks.com>